Online advertising may be an important source of revenue for enterprises engaged in electronic commerce. A number of different kinds of page-based online advertisements are currently in use, along with various associated distribution requirements, advertising metrics, and pricing mechanisms. Processes associated with technologies such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) may enable a page to be configured to contain a location for inclusion of an advertisement. An advertisement may be selected for display each time the page is requested, for example, by a browser or server application.
Some search engine marketing systems may allow an advertiser to place a bid on a keyword or query. If a web surfer searches for the search term the advertiser bid on, the advertiser's advertisement may be displayed to the web surfer. The advertiser may pay a fee to the search engine marketing system provider when the web surfer clicks through on the advertisement. Thus, the search engine marketing system provider and the advertiser may benefit from ensuring all of the advertisement slots on a search results page are filled with relevant advertisements. The more relevant advertisements displayed to the web surfers, the greater the likelihood may be that a web surfer may click through to an advertiser's site, resulting in a lead for the advertiser and revenue for the search engine marketing system provider.
This may be a viable mechanism for concept-based advertising; however it may only allow an advertiser to target web surfers based on a keyword or a query. This may require advertisers to predict keywords or queries that may be searched for by web surfers. If a web surfer searches for a keyword or query which has not been bid on by any advertisers, the search engine marketing system may not display any advertisements to the web surfer. If a search results page is displayed with no advertisements, there may be little likelihood of leads for the advertisers and revenue for the search engine marketing system provider.